A Second Speech (AKA Molly Down The Aisle)
by bauble123
Summary: Molly Hooper is getting married, but not to Sherlock. Sherlock is sad; he can't work out why. Mary is angry; it's impossible to find bridesmaid's dresses for a short 2 year old. John is comforting. Molly and Mary then get drunk at Molls' hen night and Mrs Hudson proves to be a wonderful speech writer, helping Sherlock write his speech for the wedding. One shot made of 13 sections.


This is a short one shot made up of 13 even shorter sections.

**As for relationships, it's Molly plus work colleague. Sherlock has unrequitedness, and of course friendship, with a slightly touching-ish speech at the end. His love is shown, in its own little way.**

**Note (please read, kind of important):** I chose Molly to be married to a rather vague character called Richard from Edinburgh because I wanted her to be with someone other than Sherlock. Also, in reality, these people would have a wider circle of friends, whom I have included here, and Molly would be a lot more likely to marry a man she had met independently than one of the canon characters with whom she seems to have little or no chemistry.

_Okay, so when I wrote that I was slightly in rant mode. Since then I have had a huge review that was basically telling me that I'd been really rude in saying my opinion like that, accused me of not having decency and all. **I didn't mean to insult Sherlolly(or any other Molls ship)! **Can I make that really really clear? I honestly didn't. I quite like Sherlolly! I was just trying to justify the fact that I had married her off to a stranger. I have the utmost respect for all the shippers of everything. When I said little or no chemistry I literally just meant that as a generalisation. She does have some chemistry with Sherlock, sure. I'm sorry! Really, I am. Honestly. This was just to justify what I'd done, because I know it's not something people usually do, right? _

Sometimes, in order to create more realistic fiction , we need to broaden the fandom universe and remember that it encompasses the whole of the UK, not just those people who happen to feature in the small section of society actually shown on Sherlock. Molly never seems to have many friends or acquaintances in fanfictions, so I made her some, ranging from work colleagues to childhood and university friends to a lover.

**A Second Speech (or Molly Down The Aisle)**

_She was getting married. How was he supposed to manage now? Would she quit her job? Who would be his inside contact? Bodies… Did the new man like bodies? What did it matter? Why should he care what she did? If anything, he ought to be happy for her. Happy… And he was supposed to make a speech. A speech?! Had she seen his last speech? Clearly not. Oh, well._

Sherlock pulled himself out of his reverie. So Molly was getting married; this was a good thing, wasn't it? According to the rest of the world it was, and he ought to agree. It was just his sociopathic nature kicking in, most likely. He sat down on the sofa, picked up a notebook and laid it across his lap. Then he took up a pen and licked it, glancing thoughtfully at the piece of paper. After a few moments, ink touched paper and he began to write.

"You coming to the wedding, then?" Donovan asked. Lestrade looked up from the report he was writing.

"Hmm?"

"Molly Hooper's wedding." the sergeant repeated. "Are you coming?"

"What? Oh, yes, I suppose so." Lestrade muttered, clearly not concentrating. He took a sip of tea from the mug behind his papers.

"Oi! That was mine!" Sally said indignantly. Lestrade ignored her and took another pull from the hot liquid. He didn't seem to notice the lack of sugar. Something, Sally thought, happened when you became a proper hardened policeman, a change in your taste-buds that let you drink scalding liquids and notice nothing, even if the taste was completely different.

"My God!" Mary said, flinging herself down on the sofa. "That was something." She looked at her husband and waved a vague hand. "Go and check Soph hasn't woken up, would you love?" John said nothing; he knew enough to know that this wasn't really a question. He returned and nodded to her.

"All good." he said. "What was wrong?"

"It is _unbelievably _difficult to find a bridesmaid's dress for a short two year old." she said. "I had to get her a christening dress – they don't make them small enough. And I'm picking off the glitter. I can't stand the stuff. It's your fault, you know, John, for being so damn short."

"I'm the same height as you are, but fair enough. At least you found something." John said, comfortingly. Mary laughed sarcastically.

"Huh."

"You should be happy," her husband protested. "That Molly wanted our daughter to be her bridesmaid."

"Sure." Mary's sarcasm was palpable. "Yeah, right. Soph won't even bloody remember the damn thing and I have to do all the work."

"It's for a wedding though, love. For love. If we'd had a friend with a kid as cute as Sophie, we'd have wanted them for our wedding, wouldn't we?"

"Too bad I only have friends from two years before we got married, and you only have Sherry."

"You shouldn't call him that, Mary. He hates it."

"And so he should."

The door opened, the key twisting in the lock. Molly jumped up from her seat and ran over, straight into her fiancé's open arms. He closed them around her and lifted her off the floor in an all-encompassing hug. Squealing and giggling, she batted her arms uselessly against his grip. Ignoring her frenzied efforts, Richard moved over and dropped her gently onto the sofa. Then he stood back and took off his coat, throwing it over the back of an arm chair.

"Oh, I've missed you." he said, leaning in to give her a quick kiss.

"I know," she replied, pulling herself upright and dusting off her skirt. "I missed you too. Why did they have to send you off to Aberdeen right before the wedding?"

"I don't know, I really don't, but these conferences don't wait for anything, or anyone. If it was my choice, I would gladly have put it off for you – I'd miss anything for you, stop time, even."

"You don't half talk rubbish sometimes." Molly said, standing up and sauntering into the kitchen. Secretly, she was extremely flattered and glad she had got Richard. But the love she had for him was coupled with a dreadful apprehension that somehow she would lose him, a deep-seated worry that such happiness could not last. It came, she supposed, from working in a morgue while being head-over-heels in love. You just couldn't help but worry that your fiancé would be the next one laid up on your slab.

"But it's good rubbish, right?" Richard queried, following her through.

"Sure it is." Molly handed him three carrots and a peeler.

"What are these for?"

"You use them. Do some work for once, Dick."

They arrived at St Bart's. Richard locked the car up and gave Molly a quick peck on the cheek. They embraced briefly, and then went into the hospital via their separate entrances. The receptionist gave Molly a wink as she passed, which she ignored. Why did everyone do that when you were engaged?

She pushed open the door to the morgue and entered. A corpse lay spread-eagled on the table, its pale pink skin mottled from the head up and thick lacerations showing where the rope had been about the neck. Blakely the coroner looked up as she came in and gave her a wicked grin.

"He looks like your young man." he said. Molly was mortified.

"What? Stephen! I'm getting married in three days. That is inappropriate."

"Aye aye, captain." Blakely gave his colleague a mock-salute and picked a pipette out of a jar of yellowy liquid.

Sherlock let his head drop onto the table. The floor was littered with scrunched up pieces of paper, and his hands were stained with ink from an exploded biro. He groaned, the sound muffled by the papers on which his head lay. There was a hesitant knock on the door. He ignored it, and, moments later, Mrs Hudson entered, carrying a cup of tea. She glanced over, taking in the paper, ink and despair.

"Oh, look at you Sherlock." she said, reprovingly. "You're in such a state. What's the matter?" She came over and put the tea down on the table. Sherlock raised his now ink-smudged face and gave her a look of utter misery.

"I have to write a speech," he said. "For Molly's wedding."

"Oh, yes, that nice young Richard fellow. The one with the Scottish accent, I know. He's lovely, he is, just right for her. So down to earth, you know, and she always was a bit emotional. I think it's a good thing they're getting married. She does need to settle down. Everyone has to, at some point. I mean, look at John and Mary with little Sophie. He's so happy now…" she paused, realising what she had just said. "Not that he wasn't happy before, with you, but it was always a bit of a gamble, Sherlock dear, and we all need a bit of stability after a while. Not everyone can be like you. It drives most of us mad, after a while. I remember when I was with my husband – it was an adventure every day with that one, you know, and I just remember thinking how much I loved the thrill of it. I always was a bit heady in my younger days though, you know, a bit of a frivolous flibbertigibbet, and-" Sherlock held up a weary hand, stopping Mrs Hudson in full flow. "Sorry, Sherlock." she said, patting him on the shoulder. "What's wrong with the speech writing? You look like you're about to cry over it."

Sherlock took a gulp of tea. "I have no idea in hell what to write." he said, after a moment.

"Don't you? I'd have thought it was easy. You did such a nice job of it at John's wedding."

Sherlock raised an imperious eyebrow. "A nice job of it? I solved a bloody murder, Hudders."

"So you did, so you did." agreed that lady amiably. "Anyway, I suppose you ought to just write something along the lines of this: Molly Hooper," Mrs Hudson's voice was suddenly much more serious, and seemed to carry a lot of weight and gravitas. Sherlock looked up at her in surprise. "You have been a great friend of mine for many years now, and you have always been invaluable to me, as, indeed, you must have been to a great many people. Your unfailing humility has kept me and so many others going through the worst of times. I know that none of us are perfect, myself counted, but you are so slow to judge that it keeps us with faith in ourselves. What is more, you are refreshingly practical and down to Earth. I have, in the past, taken actions which hurt a great many people, and you brought the realisation of this to me, by, as I recall, slapping me in the face." she paused. "They'll like that one, Sherlock; funny anecdote and all that."

"How did you know about that?" Sherlock queried.

"John told me."

"Of course he did."

"Yes, he did. Now, anyway, you have to continue. You need to say how glad you are that she has finally found someone who can care for her in a loving way that does justice to her unique and amazing personality, and that you hope they will be very happy together." Mrs Hudson finished.

Sherlock stared at her, then jumped up impulsively and embraced her. "Mrs Hudson!" he cried. "You absolute ruddy genius!"

"Down it! Down it! Down it!" the shout rang out amongst the little group clustered round the table. Crowds of strangers were beginning to knot round them, drawn in by the familiar cry. Molly looked across at Mary, who nodded and looked pointedly at the shot glass that sat before Molly on the table. Molly looked with slight disgust at the glass, then braced herself, lifted it and poured the reddish orange liquid down her throat. She leant forward, coughing and spluttering. Her friend Natalie put out a hand and patted her on the back, and she subsided, raising the empty glass in a shaky salute of triumph. There was a smattering of applause and shouts from the assembled crowd. Someone did a wolf whistle. Molly adjusted the tacky plastic tiara and veil on her head and looked over at Mary, who grinned sarcastically.

"Your turn." Molly said. The refrain was echoed by the crowd. Mary tipped the top hat she had somehow ended up wearing and picked up a glass – not a shot glass but a normal sized one. This done, she poured the neat whisky into it, half full, and raised it to her lips. There was an outbreak of frenzied muttering amongst the crowd and then they all relapsed into a stunned silence. Molly's face turned pale as chalk. She stared at Mary. "A-are you sure you want to do that?" she asked, tremulously. Mary nodded.

"I'm hardened to this play." she told the crowd, putting the glass down on the table for a moment with a chink. "And I'm confident." Slowly, raising the tension and suspense to the maximum, to a level you could have sliced with a razor blade, or even a shard of broken bottle, she raised the glass. Then, giving the onlookers an amused and wicked smile (she had taken so long that by now rumour had spread, and a large crowd had gathered to watch the crazy blonde chick that was drinking a half-glass of undiluted whisky), she drank the whole thing in one fluid motion. She barely blinked, and made no evidence of spluttering or coughing as Molly had done. Everyone looked at her in amazement. "And there you have it." she said, her speech only just slurring. There was a crashing sound as the whole room erupted into applause, and cheers resounded around. Mary smiled. She looked pointedly at Molly. "More?"

"No thanks! I don't think I stand a chance against you. Where the hell did you learn to do it like that?" Molly asked, her speech still infallibly clear (she would not admit it, but some of the earlier 'cocktails' had in fact been fruit juice).

"Places." Mary replied.

"Huh." The crowd dissipated after a while, and the barman came over to offer Mary his congratulations and a jar of maraschino cherries with a packet of cocktail sticks stuck to it by way of an elastic band. The members of the hen party gathered around to decide what to do next. As a means of filling in time as they discussed the options, they ate syrup-covered cherries with the cocktail sticks, Mary having wrenched open the previously impenetrable jar.

The party was a motley one, comprised of Molly Hooper, the bride to be; Mary (of course), recent yet oddly close friend of the bride; Natalie, a dark young woman who was embracing the joys of a non-marital arrangement with her long-term boyfriend, and who was Molly's friend from their training days and worked at the morgue in [INSERT NAME OF LONDON HOSPITAL HERE]; Lara, a friend of Molly's from university who was small, dusky and slight in appearance; Kate, a school friend of Molly's; Emma, her general friend whom she had met at a club when she had flatly refused to be picked up by Molly's friend Elliot and Minna, another university friend and also Lara's girlfriend.

"I vote," Lara said, putting her fist down on the table. "That we go to adifferent, I mean, a different, bar. Thish one jusht got boring."

"Agreed." Mary said. She had been taking charge of the evening.

"Why don't we play the pickp – I mean, the pick-up game?" asked Emma. "We can all try one. Only, only youshe two," She pointed a lax, drunken finger in the general direction of Molly and Mary. "Have gotto, got to take of your ringsh. They'll pummen, put men off."

"Not happening." Mary said, flatly. "I'll supervise."

An hour later and Lara and Minna were dancing, entwined, on the strobe lighted floor of the new club; Natalie was spread out across two chairs, her head cutely in her hands, telling a group of assorted men an apparently hilarious story on which they appeared to fixated; Emma was sipping a cocktail bought by the man sitting next to her at the bar and giggling foolishly with him, her hand on his chest; Kate was in a corner, passionately kissing a man she had just met (and whom she would later marry and have two children with) and Mary was in the loos assisting Molly who, not being used to this much alcohol, was being violently sick. She was wiping Molly's face with a dampened piece of paper on which could be seen, in smudged and faded letters, the digits of the number of an extremely handsome man for whom Mary cared absolutely nothing, and who was waiting outside where she had promised (as a joke) to meet him. He would wait there all night.

Mrs Hudson arrived to collect Sherlock's mug and smiled; he was fast asleep among mounds of screwed up paper, a neatly written copy stacked crisply in a pile on the shelf, just out of his reach. In his slumber he repeated the words "you are special…you always have been."

The crowds streamed in to the little church, each one greeted by Richard and Paul the best man. "Greg, isn't it?" Richard asked, shaking the hand of the rather serious grey haired man that came up to them.

"Yes, yes, it is. It's nice to see Hooper settling down, and with someone nice, too. Thank goodness she didn't end up marrying an imitation." Lestrade commented as he walked into the church. Richard stared after him, puzzled.

"I wonder what he meant by that…" he murmured. Next came a man Richard had heard plenty about and met, accompanying a curly-haired older woman. "Sherlock! Glad you could make it, and Mrs Hudson. It really is lovely to have you."

"I wouldn't," said Sherlock, smiling in contrast with the dryness of his tone. "Miss it for the world."

There was a knock on the door of Mrs Hooper's house. She rushed to answer it, shouting to her daughter that she would get it and Molly needn't trouble herself. She opened the door to reveal the smiling countenance of one Mary Watson, and a much smaller figure holding her hand and tottering forward, beaming.

"Mary!" Mrs Hooper, who was acquainted with her daughter's friend, cried. "How nice to see you. And little Sophie too – oh, isn't she just gorgeous! Come on upstairs. Have you got Sophie's bridesmaid's dress? Yours is upstairs."

"Yes, yes, I have it." Mary said, following Molly's mother up the stairs with Sophie lifted over one shoulder. They came into Molly's bedroom and the bride, who was sitting at the dressing table, hair down and wearing a dressing gown, turned around to look at them. Sophie rushed instantly over, tripping and falling and deciding crawling was a quicker method of transport. She hauled herself upright on the leg of the chair and presented herself, grinning, hands outstretched, to Molly. Molly smiled and took her youngest bridesmaid up on one knee, jiggling her about and talking to her, showing her the hairbrush and hairclips set out on the dressing table.

"We'd better get started on you." Mary said.

"I'll leave you to it." said Mrs Hooper, bustling back downstairs.

Then they heard the door go and a few seconds later two more of the bridesmaids arrived: Kate and Emma. Natalie followed soon after, along with Richard's ten year old and thirteen year old nieces. Molly smiled and hugged them. Then, with the help of Mary and Kate, she was got into her wedding dress before being hurried away by Emma who did her makeup expertly. Mary then proceeded with Molly's hair. She brushed out the back of and then, in a long and extensive process, twisted it up into a curving and intricate looking bun. Then she took the sides, turned on the curlers, shooed Sophie off in the other direction and folded the leftover locks into gloriously perfect ringlets. Molly looked at herself in the mirror.

"Oh!" she cried. "It's lovely, Mary. How did you learn to do that?"

"YouTube." Mary said, plainly. Molly laughed. After this, there was a frenzy of people getting changed, hairpins in mouths, searching desperately for hairbands or lipsticks. Mary had an extra hard time of it because, as well as dressing herself, she was expected to sort out Sophie and the ten year old niece, whose name was Phoebe. Eventually, all was ready and they set off to see Molly Hooper become Molly McLeonard forever more.

Richard's father waited at the door, and led Molly by the hand into the church as the Lohengrin March played, her lacy veil spread elegantly over her face. The bridesmaids followed, the two youngest ones first, holding up the train, followed by the three older ones, with Mary bringing up the rear, Sophie in arm. There were hands clasped in joy at the adorableness of the two year old bridesmaid and sighs of "aw" everywhere in the church as they proceeded. The rest of the wedding went off without a hitch, and several people cried during the vows, Mrs Hudson included (because, as we all know, she always cries at weddings).

The reception was halfway through when Molly caught Sherlock's eye across the tables. She mouthed _speech!_ at him, and so he lifted his fork and chinked it against his glass, bringing the room to silence. Then he stood up.

"Molly Hooper –Molly McLeonard, I mean," he said. "You are someone very dear and special to me, a good friend of mine, and you have, I must admit, very often been quite invaluable to me, as, indeed, you must have been to a great many people. Your unfailing humility has kept me and so many others together and continuing during the hardest of times. I know as well as anyone that none of us are perfect, myself counted, but you are so slow to judge that it rekindles the fire of faith in ourselves, and we feel worthwhile and whole again. What is more, you are refreshingly practical and down to Earth. I have, in the past, taken actions which hurt a great many people, and you instantly brought the realisation of this to me as no-one else could, by, as I recall, slapping me in the face." There was a laugh from the crowd.

"You have been the cause of justice for a great many murderers and criminals and, more importantly, it has not hardened you to coldness or cynicism. You remain as kind and pure as you have always been, unchanged and not jaded by the horrors you have witnessed. That is an achievement commendable in anyone, and it means something more important that any kind of personal gain; it means that you are fundamentally a good, true person. You have stuck by your morals through thick and thin, and we all, I am sure, thank you for that.

"And now you have Richard," Sherlock added, gesturing to the groom who sat holding his wife's arm. "And I am glad of it. I am happy that you have finally found someone right for you; someone worthy of you, who can love and cherish you and do justice to your unique, amazing personality. I can't say fairer than that. You two complete one another and… And you've always been special, and you always will be special, to me, at least."


End file.
